Getting to Mtwara was not without its challenges. Tanzanian immigration took me 2-3 hours. A couple of days of catching up (on sleep and with Suze) in Dar, and then I would be moving on to Mtwara. Dar is friendly in a busy way. Decent variety of places to eat and an abundance if taxis to take you there. Much cheaper and cooler than a taxi is a pujaji, which is basically a motor rickshaw. Or to put it another way a moped with a cheap tent on the back. This has the advantage of allowing in a cooling breeze and the disadvantage that in the case of unplanned meeting with a Toyota Landcruiser, it offers no more protection than, well, a cheap tent.
Another advantage became apparent shortly after one of our pujaji drivers (a boy of surely no more than 14?!) proudly boasted of his “short cut road”. We soon hit a rock and punctured one of the puny tyres, but the lightweight construction, along with the good fortune of me being a large-ish mzungu, meant we could lift the thing up and change said wheel despite him having no jack. Genius. At least we could be sure of better reliability in the 100 dollar internal flight down to Mtwara…
The plane down to here was delayed 4-5 hours and when it did arrive it was – how shall we say? Knackered. Imagine Del Boy’s Reliant with wings. Still, the crew were very nice and “ye cannae change the laws of physics”, so given its full compliment of two wings and at least one engine, it was a plane and it could fly. Unfortunately, by the time I got on, a nun had stolen my seat and didn’t want to move, and my guessing somewhere else to sit caused a domino effect of clashing seat numbers and milling travellers in the baking hot oven of a cabin. Finally, some 4 and-a-bit hours after we should have finished the journey, we took off for the 45 min hop to Mtwara.
I had been told that the view from the plane was impressive, but I didn’t see much to write home about? Countless meandering rivers and soft deltas, pouring their water into deep oceanic blue. Forests and mangroves held back from the water by a tiny strip of golden sand. Shaded, green islands and occasional wooden sailing boats. Is that it? Maybe I have been spoilt by living the last 2 years inside a picture postcard: London’s square grey concrete and round grey smog…
But enough of such banalities; what is it actually like to be in Mtwara? For the first hour or two words failed me. Among the words I should have been using would be beautiful, peaceful, picturesque, friendly, lush and did I say beautiful?
To get an idea of the view from either our kibanda or the terrace/bar: In the foreground there are big spiky fingers of orange-brown coral. Just beyond them a kind of mud and sand-flat with rock pools and wandering ghost- and hermit-crabs. Big dark birds seem to be common on the flats (purple heron and hammerkop, I mention specifics just in case you are an ornithologist or imagine that I am a xenophobe). And beyond that is a full widescreen panorama of sea. Bright, almost shining turquoise in the day time, but with layers of darker blue visible over the deeper straights. As evening draws in fishermen punt across the shallow water in dugout canoes, an incredible slow motion display of patience and balance which seems to be mocked by the manically fighting geckos on the rocks and posts at the edge of the shore. The next months will have their challenges of course, but it’s hard not to feel like the luckiest person around, when you think about spending years living here.
The plane down to here was delayed 4-5 hours and when it did arrive it was – how shall we say? Knackered. Imagine Del Boy’s Reliant with wings. Still, the crew were very nice and “ye cannae change the laws of physics”, so given its full compliment of two wings and at least one engine, it was a plane and it could fly. Unfortunately, by the time I got on, a nun had stolen my seat and didn’t want to move, and my guessing somewhere else to sit caused a domino effect of clashing seat numbers and milling travellers in the baking hot oven of a cabin. Finally, some 4 and-a-bit hours after we should have finished the journey, we took off for the 45 min hop to Mtwara.
I had been told that the view from the plane was impressive, but I didn’t see much to write home about? Countless meandering rivers and soft deltas, pouring their water into deep oceanic blue. Forests and mangroves held back from the water by a tiny strip of golden sand. Shaded, green islands and occasional wooden sailing boats. Is that it? Maybe I have been spoilt by living the last 2 years inside a picture postcard: London’s square grey concrete and round grey smog…
But enough of such banalities; what is it actually like to be in Mtwara? For the first hour or two words failed me. Among the words I should have been using would be beautiful, peaceful, picturesque, friendly, lush and did I say beautiful?
To get an idea of the view from either our kibanda or the terrace/bar: In the foreground there are big spiky fingers of orange-brown coral. Just beyond them a kind of mud and sand-flat with rock pools and wandering ghost- and hermit-crabs. Big dark birds seem to be common on the flats (purple heron and hammerkop, I mention specifics just in case you are an ornithologist or imagine that I am a xenophobe). And beyond that is a full widescreen panorama of sea. Bright, almost shining turquoise in the day time, but with layers of darker blue visible over the deeper straights. As evening draws in fishermen punt across the shallow water in dugout canoes, an incredible slow motion display of patience and balance which seems to be mocked by the manically fighting geckos on the rocks and posts at the edge of the shore. The next months will have their challenges of course, but it’s hard not to feel like the luckiest person around, when you think about spending years living here.
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